Four Cheese & Sausage Stuffed Shells

That’s right people, not just one cheese, not two or three. I am bringing you FOUR cheeses in this dish. If that itself doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will. Maybe the soft jumbo pasta shells, the savory tomato sauce and the spicy Italian sausage will do the trick. I planned on using low fat Ricotta in this dish because I’m generally not a fan of fat free cheeses, but my grocery store was out. I figured mixing it with Parmesan and low fat cottage cheese would mellow or eliminate any icky “fat free taste” and honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference. The fat free Ricotta tasted like normal Ricotta to me! This is a great dish to serve your family or to guests because it makes a lot. I plan on freezing half of my pan in individual servings to reheat on nights I don’t feel like cooking. I’ll come back in a few weeks and let you all know how it reheats!

Four Cheese & Sausage Stuffed Shells

Yield:12 (3 shell) servings

Ingredients:

12 oz box of jumbo pasta shells (approximately 36 shells)

1 lb uncooked Italian chicken or turkey sausage, casings removed

24 oz jar of pasta sauce, divided (I used tomato basil sauce)

15 oz fat free Ricotta cheese

16 oz 1% low fat cottage cheese

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

Salt, to taste

1 cup shredded 2% Mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350. Spread ½ cup of the pasta sauce across the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish and set aside.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta shells according to package directions. Drain.

While the water is boiling, place the uncooked sausage in a sauté pan and bring over medium-high heat. Cook meat while breaking it up with a wooden spoon until meat is browned and cooked through. Reduce heat to low and add the remainder of the pasta sauce. Stir to combine with sausage and keep on low to warm.

In a large bowl, mix the ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning and salt and stir until thoroughly combined. Spoon the cheese mixture evenly into each pasta shell, placing the filled shells into the prepared baking dish. Fitting all 36 stuffed shells in the dish is a tight squeeze! Spoon the sauce and sausage over the top of the shells and spread it out evenly. Sprinkle the Mozzarella cheese over the top of the sauce.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until heated through and cheese on top is melted and lightly browned.

Traci – It’s something I want to start doing moving forward, I just haven’t made a big deal about it yet because I want to make sure I’ll stick to doing the extra work before I promote it :P. Hearing that it’s helpful for you makes me feel like it’s worth it! The only big problem is that the thought of going back and figuring out the NI for every single one of my previous recipes sounds incredibly overwhelming/time consuming/daunting. When I officially make the commitment moving forward I’ll have to let everyone know that going back to add it to all my old recipes is going to take a while…

Anonymous replied: — January 30th, 2012 @ 3:56 am

Thanks for posting the nutrition info. Just found out I have gestational diabetes and need to count carb servings per meal/snack. I appreciate your recipes showing me the carb count! Thanks!

looks great!! any suggestions for sausage substitutes? i really, really don’t like sausage of any kind. it looks like they’d be good without the sausage, but i think DBF would want some sort of meat in there. 😀

This is very similar in concept to the homemade ravioli filling we make… italian sausage and some feta and havarti cheese. When I have more filling than homemade ravioli dough, I also stuff it into the shells like above. Delicious. Bet this recipe is delicious too and oh, fat free ricotta taste the same as regular to me. Now if I could just find a low fat macaroni and cheese that tasted anything like the real thing. *sigh* My family still prefers the blue box to my attempts at homemade low fat mac and cheese.

Made this dish last night, so good!!!! Had guests over for dinner and ended up sending the recipe home with them. I couldn’t find FF ricotta at my grocery store, so I used the low fat version and substituted FF cottage cheese.

Emily- how did you fill your shells? Is there an easier way than spooning the mixture in? I ended up getting the filling everywhere

I am currently eating this AMAZING dish. What an awesome recipe! This is one of the best meals I’ve made in the last year. I can’t tell you how much my husband and I love this recipe. You’ve really outdone yourself, and I can’t wait to make it again (and I’ve got more on my plate and leftovers!). Thank you!!

Just made these tonight. SO delicious. We added about 2 cups of chopped baby spinach leaves to the cheese mixture to up the fiber/veggie content. This is definitely getting added to the dinner rotation.

Having the in-laws over tonight and making this awesome looking dish! I can’t wait to try it! Thanks for all the WW friendly recipes. I couldn’t be as successful as I am without all of your tasty dishes!

Emily – you ROCK!! This was so amazing. It was even better the second day as leftovers. Everything I have made from your site has been so good – and most are super easy as well. You have made me fall in love with cooking again and following Weight Watchers is a breeze with your recipes in the weekly rotation. I even got my husband to join WW and he is enjoying all of your recipes! Thank you SO much and Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Emily Bites replied: — December 21st, 2014 @ 8:56 pm

Aw, thank you! I’m so glad you loved this recipe and that my site has been so helpful for you. That makes my day :). Thank you for your lovely comment and Merry Christmas to you and yours as well!